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Category Archives: poem a day

Day 1 of NaPoWriMo calls for a “Lune” poem, essentially a 5-3-5 haiku style, following either the rule of syllables per line, or number of words per line. I ended up doing the latter for this specific exercise. Not that this needs much background, but I am currently on a Friend Pilgrimage, and I ended up doing a Thai Chi/Yoga class with a friend before I left to travel to another city. After I told her about the poem a day prompt, she told me to write about the class. I figured why not, and this is the result. I’m not convinced that this piece is finished, or perfect, but it’s the first day of the challenge, and the second thing I’ve written in the past 4 months since completing my MFA–so rusty gears and all that. Without further ado:

expire weakness, extend focus. Repeat.

It’s that time of the year again, where I drum up content by participating in NAPOWRIMO!

That’s all I really have to say. I’m in the midst of traveling and job applications, so I’ll most likely write the poems and either forget to post them, or post them in large clumps. Either way, they are coming, and hopefully soon I can really delve into my monthly 100 word stories, which I believe I promised myself that I would start at the beginning of January.

What can you do, you create a list of 5 things you want to accomplish in 2016, and you make good on 4 out of 5 of those promises before April. I feel like you should call that a success.

At any rate, I hope this message finds you well, creative, and healthful.

Stay curious. Stay eager.

Erin

P.S. For any who are interested in participating/are looking for prompts/wondering about the upcoming hyperlinks under NAPOWRIMO, should check out www.napowrimo.net.

Today’s poem is supposed to be pastoral. Mine turned into an epiphany–perhaps poorly worded, maybe not conveying the full extent of my feelings, but it’s an attempt nonetheless. Also, I love the beach a lot. The end. 8 days left of the challenge!

“Amazement”
is the word to use to describe as I pause outside myself
on Hunting Island, the North Beach.the tide is out farther than my memory can recall and

it leaves remnants of the ocean in its wake.
children, dogs, older couples comb the sand,
inspecting what was living, what is still alive.

while we should smell death from the baking jellyfish,
the drying sand dollars, the waterlogged crustaceans,
the sea absorbs it, or perhaps it makes the smell new—
mixed with salt, fish and Coppertone.

seagulls alight and peck at hermit crabs.
dolphins and pelicans alike dive at fish along the waves.

I think the first poem I ever did for a poetry month challenge was an erasure poem, but I did it differently. Today I took a page out of the Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Friere, and made something.
There it is. Probably means as much as the entire text.

NaPoWriMo’s prompt of the day is to write a fact poem. I think I could have made a epic-length poem about elephant facts instead I got waylaid by thinking of all of the facts we once knew for truth, all of the stories we had created to explain them, etc etc. I think this poem, at present is skeletal, half-formed, much like my understanding of the world. The subject matter requires a more verbose structure, but this is perhaps some seeds to plant within your mind until I can come back and really philosopher attack this.

NaPoWrimo’s PAD 18, was a poem about an urgent journey. Because inspiration refused to strike, and there are 11 days left of the challenge, I allowed myself a freebie and moved on to today. PAD 19 is to write a landay or a 22 syllable rhyming couplet. I wanted to just work on two stand alone lines as opposed to a long drawn out poem, so this is where we ended up:

NaPoWriMo’s Day 17 is all about that social media. It was pretty loose in prompt, so I ended up writing a couple of twitter based haikus. The first was an experiment where I took the first word out of consecutive tweets on my feed (omitting some articles and the like) to make it. It’s abstract, and because it isn’t completely sculpted by me, you are allowed to read whatever the hell you want out of it. The second haiku, I took the first five syllables from some publishing tweet, the first 7 syllables from a Neil Gaiman tweet if you can believe it, the first two syllables from an NPR tweet and then the last three came from the first part of a Henry Tudor tweet. These were also consecutively placed (skipping a couple tweets) on my twitter feed. So, that was fun. Enjoy! Make better ones!

“Scraps of Friday”Wine-fall on FridaySupports an odd harmony.You are poetry.“Friday Twitters”23 reasonsand a groupon for tonight.Update: Eating cake.

And we’re caught up. Today’s prompt at NaPoWriMo was a doozy. And I think the major accomplishment is not getting totally lost by the form. So I will link you to a good example page if you want to try it out, otherwise, here is what I got:
“Country Dream”

Dotting the sky with stars, we look upwards
from the bed of a truck, in a field of hay.
This is the dream that we’ve created.

Expanding skies, we open to each other.
We touch, lightly at first
from the bed of a truck, in a field of hay.

Laughter in the breeze—
our tired eyes cling to sight—
we touch, lightly at first.

NaPoWriMo, for the halfway mark into the month challenge, gives the prompt of addressing the poem, or an aspect of it within the poem. As with any prompt, you take it where you want it, and it more or less mentioned the aspect of writing process, and all that fun stuff, so I just kind of ran stream of consciousness into this little number:

“This is Why I Write”

Thrill seekers, these lines
Search for puzzles and riddles.
To learn, to grow by stretching
in words, in pages, image and senses.

To understand we scribble in
lines, on books, napkins, walls.
Sometimes achieving
more often questioning—are you out there?

The connections we miss,
reworking, ordering, asking,
pulling out hair, crying
often alone; in our rooms, on park benches.

The dreaded coffee shop
where life teems.
What clichés!
Avoid the conventional, shun unoriginality.

Make up words.
Assume authority, but admit you know nothing—yet.
Hope, that this isn’t the answer.
Fear that you have written it all.

We don’t know why we do it.
These explanations are just characters.
It is our compulsion—
a duty that no one has appointed.